The Daily Spin – DraftKings Daily Fantasy Golf Preview – The Tour Championship

After over eleven months and more than 40 tour events, we have finally reached the Tour Championship. It marks one of the more interesting championships in sports as it is almost what I would call unheralded when compared to other championship events in the world of professional sports. With all of the excitement that is poured into the major tournaments, the Tour Championship ends up getting swallowed into the abyss of fall with all eyes converging on the beginning of the NFL season and the arrival of the MLB playoffs. One number that always gets my attention when looking at the Tour Championship each season is this: $10 million. From the attitudes of the players throughout the season, you would barely even realize that such a life changing prize could be at stake and yet, here it is, ready for the taking and we are lucky enough to have a field full of stars in position to win the title.

There are a lot of familiar names at the top of the standings coming into the week. If you are not familiar with the rules and point system for the FedEx Cup, any player that enters this week inside of the Top-5 can win the FedEx Cup simply by winning the tournament this weekend. While the field is smaller, at only 30 golfers, it is filled with almost all of the big names that you would expect. The Top-5 coming into the week are: Dustin Johnson, Patrick Reed, Adam Scott, Jason Day and Paul Casey.

Before we get into too much detail on the course at East Lake, we need to talk a little bit about our strategy for the event. This tournament is unlike any other that we have all year for PGA. While we have several notable events with 70 players and no cut, this week, he field is limited to only 30 players with no cut. To make matters more perplexing, the pricing structure for the week is really soft so that it is very easy to stack two or three stars on your roster and still end up with very playable scrubs at the bottom. Given the small field, lack of a cut and clustering of ownership around the top players that are most likely to challenge for the title, cash games are not going to be terribly profitable for owners this week as the differentiating factor between winning and losing will most likely be avoiding the golfer that finishes near the bottom rather than finding those that finish at the top.

For GPP events, with such a limited pool of players, it is extremely important to really zero in on your favorite players this week and but big amounts of exposure. Ownership levels for players this week will be extremely high as there are not many player in the field to work with. The biggest decision you will need to make when building your rosters is whether or not you are going to own Dustin Johnson, who will without a doubt, be the highest owned player by far this week. He comes in off of a dominating performance at the BMW two weeks ago where he blew away the field and won by three strokes. He also has two other wins on the year, including the US Open at Oakmont, which I feel boasts a fairly similar setup to East Lake in terms of distance, score to par and challenging, fast greens. As the clear favorite, I expect DJ to be owned by close to half of the field in GPP play and even higher in cash games. He might not win this weekend, but it is hard to envision him not to at least be in contention by Sunday, which is all you can hope for when paying up for a star.

This will lead owners to do a little bit of soul searching if they elect to pivot off of the favorite this week. The next three star players near the top all have some issues to deal with coming into the week. Jason Day would normally be the first pivot from DJ, but after he withdrew from the BMW with a back injury, he may well end up being the lowest owned of the $10k+ club this week. Rory McIlroy has played some of the best and worst golf this season, missing cuts and then steamrolling the field to win the following week. His putting has been a source of stress for him all summer and while a new putting coach seemed to have helped him to fix his stroke when he won The Deutsche Bank Championship, he again faltered last week at the BMW where he finished tied for 42nd. With missed cuts at two major tournaments this summer, Rory is still a question mark for many. Finally, Jordan Spieth returns to a course that has treated him well the last few years after a win last year and a 2nd place finish three years ago. Spieth has struggled since his collapse at Augusta back in April and although he did pull it together long enough to win the Dean & Deluca, he has not been a real threat to win outside of that. Spieth has struggled to hit fairways, leading to tougher shots from the rough, leading to missed greens and then having to scramble to save par with his still brilliant putter. He is finishing near the Top-10 each week as of late, but not really contending.

Roster construction this week is unusual with the affordability of solid players in the $6-7k range this week so coming up with a team that is differentiated from the rest of the pack is going to require a little bit of thought. The biggest 1st place prize of the week is in the $4 GPP where over 147,000 entries will battle for a top prize of $100,000. Most of the time when Millionaire Maker events pop up, you will hear me say many times that it will require a near perfect lineup to win. This week, that could not be more true as it is hard to envision a scenario where the winner will not have all six golfers in the Top-10. More than likely, the top prize will be split among a number of duplicate lineups, particularly if a player like DJ ends up as the winner. If you are the type that wants to throw in a few dozen lineups to take your best shot at this prize, make a small adjustment in your process and make about 25% of your rosters with well below the $50k allotted to build each team. I am not saying you need to drop down to $47k, but leaving $800-1500 on the table for a few teams will definitely give your team the uniqueness it needs to avoid duplication. If you look over the leaderboards for the last few events, there are players from all salary tiers represented near the top.

This is not a week to get crazy with your bankroll. Although it is the final tour event of the season, the off season for golf lasts all of three weeks before the fall season starts next month with full fields and a lot of new faces that we have been watching closely on the Web.com Tour (see Keagan Scott’s recaps each week to get all caught up). We should have a nice advantage in he early events as many owners will take their time in getting acclimated with the newer players. The point here is that full field events with a cut will play to our advantage this fall so do not overextend this week in an event where there will be little that separates the rosters of an adept pro from that of a total novice. Keep it light and throw in a couple of lineups for fun.

The course itself is East Lake GC in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a 7,200 yard, Par 70 course designed by Donald Ross with many long, tough Par 4 holes, two Par 5 holes (only one reachable in two shots by the bigger hitters) and fast, Bermuda greens that will hold down the scoring over the weekend as the average winning score tends to come in at around -10 (-9 for Spieth last year). This course should play a lot like US Open style courses and does compare slightly well with another Ross designed course, Sedgefield, where the Wyndham Championship is held every year just before the start of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Of course, since most of the game’s elite players tend to rest before the playoffs, course history there can be a little misleading. The normal stats are all in play this week with Strokes Gained Tee to Green, Strokes Gained Putting and Birdie or Better Percentage all near the top. However, just a cursory look at all of the long approach shots that players will have after their tee shots reveals that long iron studs are going to be in great shape along with those that can scramble to get up and down as saving par is very key on a course that does not offer many easy scoring opportunities.

The key stats for the week from our friends at Fantasy Golf Metrics:

Strokes Gained Tee to Green: 30%
Strokes Gained Putting: 20%
Birdie or Better %: 20%
Par 5 Scoring: 10%
Prox > 200: 10%
Scrambling: 10%

Enjoy the event this week. The Ryder Cup is here next week and then we get another quiet week before next season starts up. We are working around the clock on some HUGE things for the site in the weeks ahead. Hopefully, you have had the chance to check out our free NFL and MMA content (click the banners on the right side of the homepage). We have been enjoying a lot of success this month and the content is being offered for free this fall. Even before Jeff took down $120,000 in the first week of the NFL season, we had planned to offer some football content, so hopefully this piques your interest in seeing what we can do with other sports. Also…I think we are getting close with our lineup generator. We have a couple of bugs to work through, but we are really hopeful that it will be ready to go once the new season starts in a few weeks! The behind the scenes work that is going on right now is making my head spin, but there is a lot of goodness coming your way in the months ahead that we are really excited about.

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We have two lineups today to use for the week as optimal lineups. The first is simply generated based on the weightings available by using the above statistics in the model for the week. The second lineup was made by locking in DJ and solving for the rest. DJ is a strong cash play as even if he does not win, he should still be in contention on Sunday and has the potential to dominate this week as he has all season. If you choose to play in cash games this week, both of these lineups are suitable, just expect a good amount of overlap from your opponents. Your entire fate in a cash game could be determined not by how DJ or Scott lead your team, but on how Roberto Castro or Ryan Moore end up finishing so do not get overly involved this week.

Adam Scott – $10,100
Paul Casey – $9,500
Matt Kuchar – $8,200
JB Holmes – $7,400
Roberto Castro – $7,300
Daniel Berger – $7,000

Dustin Johnson – $11,700
Paul Casey – $9,500
JB Holmes – $7,400
Roberto Castro – $7,300
Daniel Berger – $7,000
Ryan Moore – $6,800

For the player pool this week, with only 30 players in the entire field, you probably are not going to want to own any more than 15-18 or so in order to overload on those golfers that you anticipate will do well versus those that you are ambivalent towards. I think that there are a couple of schools of thought in terms of an approach for the week. If you know that you are going to be in a contest like the Fantasy Golf World Championship with just a small number of entrants (30) and that many will end up using DJ to lead their team, you should probably pivot off of him, even if you believe he is the favorite to win just from a game theory perspective. With just one bullet in a small field with a large buy-in, the ownership trends tend to be amplified so that if does not win, it could end up being your team and just a handful of others that are there to benefit.

In larger GPP events like the $4 event this week, I do not have an issue with playing DJ. If I ended up building 100 rosters for the week, I will still own a large group of players overall and the likelihood that one of them is able to win is still very high. Given DJ’s performances all season, there is still a very strong chance that a finish near the top of the field could place him on the wining lineup for the week. As DJ has been amazingly consistent this season and finished in the Top-10 in 13/20 starts, I am not necessarily concerned by owning huge shares of him if he does not win. Most other weeks throughout the season it is tough to overweight a star player like DJ and to have it pay off without a huge finish, but with a field so small, the odds of DJ posting a result like he did at the PGA Championship is really minimized. Therefore, if I am in a small field with a large buy-in this week, I am fading DJ, but if I am in a huge field where I have dozens of entries, I would not fade DJ, and in fact, would make him a part of my core lineup given the limited downside and the even higher probability than normal that he delivers a strong performance.

Since my ownership numbers were somewhat balanced from top to bottom, I did not exactly have my usual group of core, secondary and tertiary players this week so here is the list of players that I did use along with the percentage that they I would own them. Given the smaller field, most of the players that you do own will have a higher ownership percentage than normal so there are not going to be many players, if any, that are in the middle to low single digit range. In order to own a few stars at the top, you have to bit the bullet and buy up a lot of players at the bottom of the salary tiers so I would not say that I am necessarily making ringing endorsements of those players near the bottom, rather they were selected as a necessity to balance out the salary cap. Given that there are not any players at the bottom that I feel overwhelmingly strong towards, I tried to balance my ownership numbers to a degree among the small portion that I at least felt relatively good about.

PLAYER POOL

Dustin Johnson – 70% ($11,700)
Jordan Spieth – 25% ($10,600)
Jason Day – 25% ($10,300)
Adam Scott – 25% ($10,100)
Paul Casey – 40% ($9,500)
Patrick Reed – 40% ($9,000)
Phil Mickelson – 20% ($8,100)
Charl Schwarzel – 40% ($7,700)
JB Holmes – 40% ($7,400)
Roberto Castro – 40% ($7,300)
Daniel Berger – 35% ($7,000)
Emliano Grillo – 45% ($6,900)
Ryan Moore – 40% ($6,800)
Si Woo Kim – 25% ($6,700)
Kevin Na – 40% ($6,500)
Jason Dufner – 30% ($6,400)
William McGirt – 20% ($6,300)

At the top, I own a good amount of DJ this week. DJ has finished in the Top-10 here in his last three starts, but the difference for DJ this year over previous years is how he is putting this season. What was once a weakness in his game now has become a strength and with his excellent long iron play and ability to score on long Par 4 and 5 holes, he is tough to match in terms of where his skills line up. I considered a fade here given that I do believe his ownership numbers will be between 40-50%, but the downside here is so minimal that it just did not seem like it was worth it. At least at the PGA Championship there was the possibility of a total meltdown where he could miss the cut. Here, we do not even get the full benefit of a poor opening couple of rounds and even without a win, we have exposure to enough of the field that it is likely that we still have the winner in our pool this week. In small contests, apply game theory if you have only one entry for a large buy-in, but for an event with thousands of entries where almost all of the players will have at least a reasonable amount of owners, I am less worried about getting tricky as diversifying my rosters will have to be done through other means such as those discussed above in terms of leaving money on the table.

Jordan Spieth and Jason Day are my semi-contrarian picks up near the top this week. I think DJ will be an overwhelming favorite among owners with Rory also generating a lot of interest. Given that Spieth has not really contended over the lat few months, I think he will be closer to 20% this week which will be on the low side for upper tier players. However, his game has not been bad lately, just not quite crisp enough to make a push on Sundays. What I like here is that there will not be as much scoring as on other courses. Spieth won last year with a score of -9 so even if he is having a tough time hitting greens, as long as he can save par, he should not get blown off the course by players that can really crank it up on easier courses. If Speith can simply hang around near the top until Sunday, he has it in him to make a late charge.

Jason Day should be owned this week so long as there is no further negative news around his back which he injured two weeks ago….or it was at least sore enough to force him to pull out of the BMW. We all know that Day is a little bit fragile in terms of his health, but the fact that he was already guaranteed to be in the Top-5 of the FedEx Cup standings makes it even easier for me to believe that it was a precautionary measure more than anything else. That withdrawal will give us a chance to own Day when the rest of the field is off of him. We do not get this chance very often and so long as he does not WD again (seems unlikely he would even have gotten this far if that was a strong possibility this week), we get a good amount of upside potential for the price.

Adam Scott has been excellent late in the season recording three straight 4th place finishes to start the FedEx Cup playoffs. Scott has been a winner at East Lake before and has several other Top-10 finishes as well. We all know his game as a tee to green specialist who is particularly deadly with his long irons. As it always does, it will come down to whether or not Scott can putt with any sort of consistency if he hopes to have a shot at taking home the title. Even if he does not, another solid finish at his price gives him a lot of value this week as more than likely a few players in the top tier will be on the winning roster.

Paul Casey is the surprise player in the Top-5 of the FedEx Cup standings after back to back 2nd place finishes put him in position for an unlikely title run if he can post a victory this week. In two previous starts at East Lake, Casey has finished in the Top-5. He is an excellent ball striker that hits a lot of greens and can play the long Par 4 holes really well. I do not feel like Casey has the countenance to pull through under pressure this week, but he is easy to stack with the top players without having to sacrifice much for the rest of your roster.

Patrick Reed finally figured out his putter in the middle of the season and his results have been fantastic over the last few months with nine straight Top-25 finishes and only one finish in that stretch worse than 13th. He won at The Barclays to kick off the FedEx Cup Playoffs and he now has a chance, with a win, to take down the FedEx Cup title as well. Reed has struggled at East Lake in the past, but I believe he is good enough around the greens to overcome some of the wildness that has always been a part of his game. He is priced as the 7th highest player this week, which is appropriate, however, given the huge drop from the $10k+ players down to Reed, I think we get a nice discount here. When I was building rosters, it was very easy to start with any star player at the top and then add Reed and Casey. This sill left enough cap space to fill in nicely at the bottom so I anticipate that being a popular strategy this week.

For our middle tier players, I selected Phil Mickelson, Charl Schwartzel, JB Holmes, Roberto Castro and Daniel Berger. Statistically, Phil just keeps showing up week after week and he does have a win at East Lake. His game has not been perfect in the FedEx Cup, but outside of a very poor decision in Boston, he has looked fine. He is a player that can get hot and make a charge and his price is as low as we will see it so he is a nice GPP option. Charl Schwartzel has been a bargain for most of the season and that continues this week. He got back on track at the BMW with a late surge on Sunday to finish in 4th place. He is an excellent tee to green player with a below average putter. At his price, his downside is limited and he could certainly compete for a top finish. JB Holmes finished 8th at East Lake a year ago and is coming off of a 4th place finish at the BMW. He has plenty of distance with his driver and irons, it is just a matter of staying out of trouble that will make the difference for Holmes. Roberto Castro continued his strong season with a 3rd place finish at the BMW two weeks ago. Though he is one of the shorter hitters in the field, he is accurate, hits a lot of greens and scores surprisingly well on both Par 4 and 5 holes. In his lone start at East Lake, he finished 9th back in 2013. Daniel Berger will probably be a very popular play this week at only $7,000. He finished 12th here a year ago and his mid and long iron game should keep him in the top half of the standings this week as well as a reasonably reliable putter that gives him the ability to score a decent amount of birdies.

The bottom tier of players this week offers us a bit of a mixed bag of players, some with great pedigrees overall and some without a lot of experience that have minimal, if any experience at a Tour Championship event. With Emiliano Grillo, we get a rising star that missed only three cuts all year and had a win last fall. I like him for his ball striking ability as he is accurate and hits a lot of greens which should keep him out of trouble. Ryan Moore tanked at the BMW, but has finished in the Top-10 in both starts at East Lake and prior to his poor showing two weeks ago, Moore has been on a nice stretch that included a win and two Top-10 finishes over four starts. Si Woo Kim looks like he will finish as the rookie of the year after winning at the Wyndham and posting consecutive Top-20 finishes in his last two starts. He is very good in both Par 4 and 5 scoring and his stats have been improving all season. Kevin Na probably will not win this week, but he probably will not be at the bottom of the standings either. He is a shorter hitter, but he is accurate and his mid range iron play should help him to hang around the leaders for a little while before fading to just outside the Top-10. Jason Dufner is talented enough to do well this week if he can just get his putter to cooperate at least a little bit. The tee to green game and iron play all line up and he does putt better on Bermuda greens which is a bonus this week. He is probably the strongest play in this low price range. Finally, William McGirt is finishing up his best season on tour this week, but does seem to be fading a little here as the season ends. The length of the course could be an issue, but McGirt’s game is well balanced and so for the price, he s worth owning for a few shares this week.

Good luck to all!

-Myz

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